


A Simple Man

by Pokytoad



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:11:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokytoad/pseuds/Pokytoad
Summary: Brief, brief vignette; Belarus attempts small talk with her bête noire. Lithuania is unwilling to share.





	

It was the soft sounds of his quiet and tedious work that drew her from the warmth of the library.

Lithuania was sitting in the parlour, propped against the wall and backed by a cheerful patterning of wallpaper. A pile of lacklustre shoes lay between his legs. Belarus noted with intrigue the way his faded trousers hung over his thighs like an old table cloth. His knees bent, giving cause for the fabric to reveal thin black socks and sharp ankle bones.

His own shoes hardly deserved their label - the tattered pair of canvas street shoes were yellowed and aged, falling apart at the soles.

As the tinny sound of the radio drifted into the dark hall where Belarus stood, the scuffing of Lithuania's shoe brush grated ever louder. His arm moved with the mechanical movements of a rusted wind-up clock, and his eyes were glazed; detached.

One of Rachmaninoff's sonatas was playing; a sad arpeggio of lilting, agonised notes.

Lithuania's eyes flickered up.

"Do you need something, Miss Belarus?"

He did not halt in his monotonous polishing.

Belarus stepped into the parlour and held out her dull Mary Janes, and he smiled gently, gesturing to the pile as if in invitation.

With a glare that was more reserved than usual, Belarus sat across from him, legs folded under her skirts.

Lithuania didn't seem to notice at first, but when he did, he finally stopped and leaned back against the wall. An attending audience.

She shifted under the intensity of his attention, agonising over words unspoken.

The soft light of the table lamp attempted to cast his face into a soft myriad of ivories, but the geometric shadows of his thin, pointed nose and sunken cheekbones competed for dominance over his plaintive features.

"Negros polish shoes." Her statement was not tactical, she realised, belatedly aware of herself.

Lithuania sighed through his nostrils, his lips tilting upwards with a breathy chuckle.

"Perhaps in America, miss. Most men can polish their own shoes."

"You call my brother an incompetence."

"Oh, no." His voice was casual, premeditative. "We are comrades after all. Brethren in skill and trade."

"Brother is much too dignified to scrub floors on his hands and knees, like you." She had watched him from the grand balcony many times, slowly working his way across the marble flooring of the grandiose ballroom with a bucket of pungent water and a scrubbing brush, until he fell asleep at the foot of the stairs.

"Yes, how ironic." He looked up then, a dangerous glint surfacing beneath those warm eyes; Belarus could hear the warning laced within his bland words.

"You are just a craven, simple man."

His nostrils flared for a moment, and though his mouth opened briefly, she knew the wisdom - the mutiny - just beneath the surface of his plain face would remain unvoiced.

So he took up the brush once again - in his blackened and callused fingers. Split knuckles displayed tiny drops of ruby to be smeared away by a careless hand.

Belarus stood, regarding him coolly.

"I will see my shoes at my door by first light." As she stepped into the grand hall, skirts sweeping around her calves, she turned back to where he had resumed the tedious work of a machine. "And you will address me properly."

"Yes ma'am."

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say that all the faulty, plain grammar is a strand of rhetoric, but alas.


End file.
